HeadStart Explorer

Donors: Stefan Jones & Chris Chan
Location: Williamsburg, VA

The HeadStart Explorer was an XT clone with some
special features. First, it came in the nice package you
see above. The included monitor had a nice stand that
straddled the main unit. The main unit could slide in and
out of the monitor stand. Even when slid fully under the
monitor stand, cut-outs on the sides of the stand let you
insert disks and power the system on and off. The
keyboard was attached to the main unit and could be
folded up to make a compact package. The system had
built-in CGA graphics, a 3½" floppy drive, and a
small hard drive. HeadStart included a nice graphical
shell to let you easily run programs. (My wife had one of
these years back. The first thing she did was turn off
the shell. How can you not love a woman who prefers a
command line?) The system unit did have room for one
8-bit card. The card would actually sit horizontally,
just under the cover on the main unit. The slot on the
motherboard was vertical, as usual. So there was an
included 90° adapter that would plug into the
motherboard, thus providing a horizontally oriented slot
for the card. Overall, it's a really nice system, except:

There was a small problem with the hard drive. The bay
in which it sits does not have adequate ventilation. If
you left the drive running for a long while, it would
really heat up. Eventually, it could heat up to the point
of softening the plastic around it. If you weren't using
the monitor stand, and had just set the monitor on the
main unit, that side could start to smush down. Another,
less serious, problem with the drive was that it was
LOUD. Not so much when it was just spinning, but you
could really hear each and every disk access. It wasn't a
bad sound, like a grinding. It was just alot louder than
most drives.

Side view showing
the hard drive. Usually, there's a cover over
this bay. There usually is more mounting hardware
here, but it had been removed because it
interfered with what little ventilation there
was.